Music. Marketing. Social Media.

The word “listening” gets thrown around a lot in my world.  From the musicians, there are listening parties, spiritual

image provided by e-magic

experiences from listening to a great piece of music, listening to dubplates, listening for the meaning behind the music – the list goes on.

From the marketing side, I hear about listening to the marketplace, listening to your consumers, or listening for your brand across the web.

Listening is great, and it’s absolutely necessary. The challenge though, is to separate listening from merely hearing.

Listening is hearing with purpose.

In the examples above, “hearing” can be substituted for every instance of “listening”.  The challenge, is to not get stuck in that comfort zone of “yeah, I’m listening”.

The trick is, to never be able to say “Yeah, I hear you” as a throwaway.

Do you?

Are you listening to that dubplate, or merely hearing what you think should be there?

Are you listening to the new album at that listening party, or just waiting for the tracks to finish so you can weigh in with your support and comments?

Are you really listening to what the marketplace is saying, or are you sorting out the comments by “stuff we want to hear” and “stuff we know comes through, but we’ll qualify as unimportant and ignore”?

When you hear a piece of music, are you listening to it, or letting it pass you by?

Listening is a great skill, and a skill that takes a lot of work and patience. Just like learning to pay an instrument, listening takes practice. Listening is not passive.

For you musicians wondering how to listen as marketers, here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Subscribe to blogs of bands/artists similar to you via Google Reader
• Set up Google Alerts for your name and the name of your band
• Set up Google Alerts for acts similar to you
• Search on Twitter (search.twitter.com) for your name, as well as the names of your songs or albums
• Subscribe to the RSS feed of that Twitter search, and pull it into Google Reader
• Search for your name, the names of acts similar to you, or other terms on socialmention.com
• Subscribe to that RSS feed and pull it into Google Reader

What you end up with is a Google Reader (or any RSS reader of your choice) full of information about what’s being said. That’s step 1.

The value comes from going back through that information and absorbing it. Read the blog posts. Comment if appropriate. Go see who’s talking about you on Twitter, reply or send them a Direct Message (DM) if it makes sense.

Look for feedback, look for trends, look for opportunities to connect.

Turn the data that gets fed to you into information by listening.

Photo credit: Alejandro Groenewold

You know that crazy guy on the street corner, shouting at you to buy his wares? They may be designer handbags (fake), pashminas, fruit, or biblical reckonings. Whatever he’s selling, he passionately wants you to buy. Obviously he conveys this by yelling at you. Obviously.

How often does that work?

… how about “It never works, unless I have a genuine need to buy his stuff – and then I buy despite the yelling.” That seems about right for me, and I know many others in this great city will also agree.

Marketing has gone from a “tell anyone who will listen our message, over and over again, and hope that they’ll eventually buy from us”, to a much more relationship-based approach.  Without being all buzzwordy – people want to talk to people and companies they’re interested in. They’re not as interested in listening to said people and companies shout in their general direction, and some are just plain turned off by the shouting.

The point is this: Social media tools aren’t just about taking the same practices from “old” marketing ways and adopting them to “new”. You can’t expect to shout at people on Twitter or Facebook like you used to do (even on MySpace, the horrors!) and have them pay attention to you. They just won’t.

If you don’t “get” it you’re probably wondering “Wait, why won’t they pay attention?”. If you do “get” it, you’re probably thinking “Yup, I agree!”.

For the ones that don’t “get” it – it boils down to the way you think about your fans/consumers. They’re not nameless and faceless people who happen to buy your stuff. They have personalities, they have passions, they have interests, they have likes and dislikes. You fit in there somewhere, which is why they buy your stuff. You have to quit thinking about your fans/consumers as anonymous pockets of money and start thinking about them for what they are – people. Fans. Consumers. Actual living breathing females and males with actual lives.

That’s where you start from!

Suddenly, shouting at people with lives and interests doesn’t make so much sense.  You wouldn’t do this in a normal social setting, so why would you online?

For years the recording industry, and even the music industry as a whole, viewed their customers as anonymous open wallets. Clearly this hasn’t worked for the recording industry in recent years, and the public is finally seeing a shift towards viewing people as actual people.

Consumers across all markets now have a true voice, and fans/consumers expect you to at the very least, listen to them.

So – on behalf of all fans and consumers out there, I beg you.  Bands? Solo artists? Please stop shouting at me. Please stop “connecting” with me on social sites and then turning the conversation around so it’s 100% about you.  I’ll stop listening, and I’ll show you that by unsubscribing, or unfollowing, or unfriending.

Chris Brogan touches on this in a recent post – check it out here (excerpt below).

The Mindset: Don’t Be That Guy

First, learn to promote, but don’t be that guy. It’s really important that you are participatory in the social space. If you’re here just to talk about you, your work just won’t get as much spread. People won’t take the actions that they might if they feel you’re “one of us.” By starting with this point, I’m saying this: your mileage WILL vary if you approach social media tools as just another channel exactly like what you were doing with marketing.

Have you had this happen to you before? Do you have more to add? Say so in the comments!